Bipartisanship is hard to come by in this divided and divisive U.S. Congress, and it’s perhaps even more scarcely rewarded. American voters consistently back ideological purity over deal-making, and members’ behavior often follows suit.

So perhaps it’s no surprise that two of the Senate’s more successful presidential candidates—Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders—are among the chamber’s most partisan: not only in the last year, according to a new ranking, but throughout their tenures in the Senate. Cruz and Sanders have built their brands on translating conviction to public policy, and that’s why their supporters love them. The Washington-busting they’ve promised America won’t come from moving to the middle, and they won’t let any kumbaya aspirations of bipartisanship get in their way.

Latest from Politics

It’s worth noting that’s not what the creators of the Bipartisan Index would hope Cruz and Sanders glean from their analysis, which evaluates senators’ sponsorship of legislation: how often members can “attract” opposing-party co-sponsors for their bills, and how often they co-sponsor opposing-party legislation themselves. The index’s creators would, in fact, hope for the opposite: that the senators take a good, long look at their performances and consider reaching across the aisle for the sake of good governance.

“[W]e do not believe that it is wrong for members to have partisan bills in their portfolio of co-sponsorships,” writes the former Indiana Senator Richard Lugar, whose eponymous Lugar Center co-produces the rankings, in an online explanation. He goes on: “Nor do we believe that all bipartisan bills are wisely written and considered. However, a consistently low score on this index will be a very strong indication that a legislator is viewing his or her duties through a partisan lens.” (Elsewhere the creators use even stronger language: A really low score shows “a member is giving little thought to working with the other party when he or she introduces bills and makes co-sponsorship decisions.”)

Lugar’s center, along with Georgetown University’s public policy school, evaluated senators on very specific metrics that neither reveal the full picture of their behavior and congeniality nor discriminate between quality and sub-par bipartisan bills. In Lugar’s words, “What we are measuring in this Index is not so much the quality of legislation but rather the efforts of legislators to broaden the appeal of their sponsored legislation, to entertain a wider range of ideas, and to prioritize governance over posturing.”

But in assigning a numerical value to senators’ records, the rankings support popular notions about senators’ behaviors and personalities. According to the new analysis, which tracked the 114th Congress’s first session, Cruz clocked in at 97th in bipartisanship, or second to last. That score is consistent with his ranking in the last Congress, which ran from early 2013 to late 2014, his first years in office. And a “lifetime” ranking of senators in office between 1993 and 2014 shows Cruz at the very bottom of the pack. Cruz’s numbers in the last couple years seem to dovetail not only with his rigid conservatism, but also with his negative reputation in the Senate.

Sanders’s “lifetime” score of bipartisanship is just a few notches above Cruz, though his independent status in the Senate might otherwise have lead some to assume he readily finds common ground with Republicans. According to the index, Sanders—who caucuses with the Democrats and has been in the Senate since 2007—has infrequently found it. (Perhaps because his far-left-leaning policies can inspire cries of “socialist!” from those who disagree.) Unlike Cruz, Sanders’s scores in recent years have changed. In the 113th, he clocked in at 90th place. But in the last year, most of which was spent running for president, Sanders’s ranking dropped: He moved from 90th to 98th, the lowest ranking in the Senate. (Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Minority Leader Harry Reid aren’t ranked.) It’s not clear why Sanders’s score dropped, though being constantly on the campaign trail might hinder on-the-Hill politicking.

Sanders and Cruz could hypothetically tout their rankings as evidence of their ideological bona fides. Not that they’d tout interpersonal prickliness, but rather the idea that Washington’s work is ineffective and unappealing. Meanwhile, their fellow senator-candidate, Marco Rubio, might not look so kindly at his score. Rubio’s “lifetime” ranking shows him closer to Sanders and Cruz than many other senators—170th out of 227—and his score in the 113th Congress was toward the middle. But last year, he was in the top third of senators. For a candidate like Rubio who’s backed away from past bipartisan work, the score might nevertheless be an unwelcome reminder. (Lindsey Graham, who dropped out of the presidential race, similarly ranked toward the top; another drop-out, Rand Paul, saw a middling score.)

Rubio’s most recent ranking could send a positive message to people who value bipartisanship—just as Sanders’s and Cruz’s lower scores show they aren’t willing to compromise on their ideals. The Lugar Center, after all, encourages members to consider that their ideological opposites “may have good ideas that are deserving of consideration.”­­­ But while evidence of working on those good ideas may play during a general election, it won’t while candidates are proving their ideological mettle to finicky primary voters.

Most Popular

Should you drink more coffee? Should you take melatonin? Can you train yourself to need less sleep? A physician’s guide to sleep in a stressful age.

During residency, Iworked hospital shifts that could last 36 hours, without sleep, often without breaks of more than a few minutes. Even writing this now, it sounds to me like I’m bragging or laying claim to some fortitude of character. I can’t think of another type of self-injury that might be similarly lauded, except maybe binge drinking. Technically the shifts were 30 hours, the mandatory limit imposed by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, but we stayed longer because people kept getting sick. Being a doctor is supposed to be about putting other people’s needs before your own. Our job was to power through.

The shifts usually felt shorter than they were, because they were so hectic. There was always a new patient in the emergency room who needed to be admitted, or a staff member on the eighth floor (which was full of late-stage terminally ill people) who needed me to fill out a death certificate. Sleep deprivation manifested as bouts of anger and despair mixed in with some euphoria, along with other sensations I’ve not had before or since. I remember once sitting with the family of a patient in critical condition, discussing an advance directive—the terms defining what the patient would want done were his heart to stop, which seemed likely to happen at any minute. Would he want to have chest compressions, electrical shocks, a breathing tube? In the middle of this, I had to look straight down at the chart in my lap, because I was laughing. This was the least funny scenario possible. I was experiencing a physical reaction unrelated to anything I knew to be happening in my mind. There is a type of seizure, called a gelastic seizure, during which the seizing person appears to be laughing—but I don’t think that was it. I think it was plain old delirium. It was mortifying, though no one seemed to notice.

His paranoid style paved the road for Trumpism. Now he fears what’s been unleashed.

Glenn Beck looks like the dad in a Disney movie. He’s earnest, geeky, pink, and slightly bulbous. His idea of salty language is bullcrap.

The atmosphere at Beck’s Mercury Studios, outside Dallas, is similarly soothing, provided you ignore the references to genocide and civilizational collapse. In October, when most commentators considered a Donald Trump presidency a remote possibility, I followed audience members onto the set of The Glenn Beck Program, which airs on Beck’s website, theblaze.com. On the way, we passed through a life-size replica of the Oval Office as it might look if inhabited by a President Beck, complete with a portrait of Ronald Reagan and a large Norman Rockwell print of a Boy Scout.

Why the ingrained expectation that women should desire to become parents is unhealthy

In 2008, Nebraska decriminalized child abandonment. The move was part of a "safe haven" law designed to address increased rates of infanticide in the state. Like other safe-haven laws, parents in Nebraska who felt unprepared to care for their babies could drop them off in a designated location without fear of arrest and prosecution. But legislators made a major logistical error: They failed to implement an age limitation for dropped-off children.

Within just weeks of the law passing, parents started dropping off their kids. But here's the rub: None of them were infants. A couple of months in, 36 children had been left in state hospitals and police stations. Twenty-two of the children were over 13 years old. A 51-year-old grandmother dropped off a 12-year-old boy. One father dropped off his entire family -- nine children from ages one to 17. Others drove from neighboring states to drop off their children once they heard that they could abandon them without repercussion.

Since the end of World War II, the most crucial underpinning of freedom in the world has been the vigor of the advanced liberal democracies and the alliances that bound them together. Through the Cold War, the key multilateral anchors were NATO, the expanding European Union, and the U.S.-Japan security alliance. With the end of the Cold War and the expansion of NATO and the EU to virtually all of Central and Eastern Europe, liberal democracy seemed ascendant and secure as never before in history.

Under the shrewd and relentless assault of a resurgent Russian authoritarian state, all of this has come under strain with a speed and scope that few in the West have fully comprehended, and that puts the future of liberal democracy in the world squarely where Vladimir Putin wants it: in doubt and on the defensive.

The same part of the brain that allows us to step into the shoes of others also helps us restrain ourselves.

You’ve likely seen the video before: a stream of kids, confronted with a single, alluring marshmallow. If they can resist eating it for 15 minutes, they’ll get two. Some do. Others cave almost immediately.

This “Marshmallow Test,” first conducted in the 1960s, perfectly illustrates the ongoing war between impulsivity and self-control. The kids have to tamp down their immediate desires and focus on long-term goals—an ability that correlates with their later health, wealth, and academic success, and that is supposedly controlled by the front part of the brain. But a new study by Alexander Soutschek at the University of Zurich suggests that self-control is also influenced by another brain region—and one that casts this ability in a different light.

“Well, you’re just special. You’re American,” remarked my colleague, smirking from across the coffee table. My other Finnish coworkers, from the school in Helsinki where I teach, nodded in agreement. They had just finished critiquing one of my habits, and they could see that I was on the defensive.

I threw my hands up and snapped, “You’re accusing me of being too friendly? Is that really such a bad thing?”

“Well, when I greet a colleague, I keep track,” she retorted, “so I don’t greet them again during the day!” Another chimed in, “That’s the same for me, too!”

Unbelievable, I thought. According to them, I’m too generous with my hellos.

When I told them I would do my best to greet them just once every day, they told me not to change my ways. They said they understood me. But the thing is, now that I’ve viewed myself from their perspective, I’m not sure I want to remain the same. Change isn’t a bad thing. And since moving to Finland two years ago, I’ve kicked a few bad American habits.

Modern slot machines develop an unbreakable hold on many players—some of whom wind up losing their jobs, their families, and even, as in the case of Scott Stevens, their lives.

On the morning of Monday, August 13, 2012, Scott Stevens loaded a brown hunting bag into his Jeep Grand Cherokee, then went to the master bedroom, where he hugged Stacy, his wife of 23 years. “I love you,” he told her.

Stacy thought that her husband was off to a job interview followed by an appointment with his therapist. Instead, he drove the 22 miles from their home in Steubenville, Ohio, to the Mountaineer Casino, just outside New Cumberland, West Virginia. He used the casino ATM to check his bank-account balance: $13,400. He walked across the casino floor to his favorite slot machine in the high-limit area: Triple Stars, a three-reel game that cost $10 a spin. Maybe this time it would pay out enough to save him.

A report will be shared with lawmakers before Trump’s inauguration, a top advisor said Friday.

Updated at 2:20 p.m.

President Obama asked intelligence officials to perform a “full review” of election-related hacking this week, and plans will share a report of its findings with lawmakers before he leaves office on January 20, 2017.

Deputy White House Press Secretary Eric Schultz said Friday that the investigation will reach all the way back to 2008, and will examine patterns of “malicious cyber-activity timed to election cycles.” He emphasized that the White House is not questioning the results of the November election.

Asked whether a sweeping investigation could be completed in the time left in Obama’s final term—just six weeks—Schultz replied that intelligence agencies will work quickly, because the preparing the report is “a major priority for the president of the United States.”

A professor of cognitive science argues that the world is nothing like the one we experience through our senses.

As we go about our daily lives, we tend to assume that our perceptions—sights, sounds, textures, tastes—are an accurate portrayal of the real world. Sure, when we stop and think about it—or when we find ourselves fooled by a perceptual illusion—we realize with a jolt that what we perceive is never the world directly, but rather our brain’s best guess at what that world is like, a kind of internal simulation of an external reality. Still, we bank on the fact that our simulation is a reasonably decent one. If it wasn’t, wouldn’t evolution have weeded us out by now? The true reality might be forever beyond our reach, but surely our senses give us at least an inkling of what it’s really like.